Open-vm-tools doesn't work any more after reboot

I'v installed open-vm-tools successfully on Ubuntu 20.04 guest in VMWare Workstation 15 on Windows 10 host.

Both full screen and shared folder work fine after the intallation.

But after reboot the VM, both full screen and shared folder don't work anymore.

These are what I'v tried:

sudo apt-get remove open-vm-tools
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools

in the process of reinstallation, there is some message like:

failed to restart open-vm-tools.service unit vgauth.service is masked

but after some search I tried:

systemctl list-unit-files|grep 'open-vm-tools'
systemctl list-unit-files|grep 'vgauth'

both are "enabled"

then

systemctl stop open-vm-tools
systemctl start open-vm-tools

no messages.

What next?

Just encountered this issue, and luckily the fix is simple:

sudo apt remove open-vm-tools --purge

which complained about the /etc/vmware-tools directory being not empty

so I just had to manually destroy the remains of such directory and then I've re-installed the open-vm-tools without issues :-)

Different user, but same issue, so I felt I'd contribute. I removed vmware-tools as there were issues with the start/stop/hibernate/resume scripts. I don't know what broke them, but I felt using open-vm-tools-desktop would be cleaner. I rebooted between the uninstall of vmware-tools and the installation of open-vm-tools-desktop.

systemctl status vgauth
× vgauth.service - Authentication service for virtual machines hosted on VMware
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/vgauth.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2023-03-07 08:56:21 EST; 1min 34s ago
       Docs: http://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools
    Process: 2555 ExecStart=/usr/bin/VGAuthService (code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION)
   Main PID: 2555 (code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION)
        CPU: 6ms

Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: Pref_Init: Using '/etc/vmware-tools/vgauth.conf' as preferences filepath
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: Core dump limit set to -1
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: INIT SERVICE
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: Using '/var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore' for alias store root directory
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: LoadCatalogAndSchema: Using '/usr/bin/../schemas' for SAML schemas
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: Error: catalog file not found at "/usr/bin/../schemas/catalog.xml"
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: Failed to load schemas
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu VGAuthService[2555]: ServiceStartAndRun: failed to init verification; exiting
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu systemd[1]: vgauth.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu systemd[1]: vgauth.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

systemctl status open-vm-tools
● open-vm-tools.service - Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/open-vm-tools.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/open-vm-tools.service.d
             └─desktop.conf
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-03-07 08:56:21 EST; 7min ago
       Docs: http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/about.php
    Process: 2561 ExecStartPre=/sbin/modprobe vmwgfx (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 2562 (vmtoolsd)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 14167)
     Memory: 1.7M
        CPU: 706ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/open-vm-tools.service
             └─2562 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd

Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware...
Mar 07 08:56:21 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware.